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As 'punishment,' Clippers bigot Donald Sterling could make $1 billion

It’s only going to get worse for embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. On Sunday afternoon, Deadspin released a longer version of everyone’s least-favorite lecherous, reptilian, slumlord billionaire airing his so-called thoughts on race to his (presumably now former) girlfriend, V. Stiviano.

Feel free to listen to more of this poisonous dreck, if you really need to hear how Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp gets dragged in, some very weird and very wrong ideas about “black Jews,” and, of course, the Holocaust.

Unless the tape in question is somehow proved to be a fabrication of such maliciously doctored skill that it’d make Gennifer Flowers blush, Sterling will receive what has to be the largest fine in National Basketball Association history, be suspended, and then be “encouraged”—à la Marge Schott —to find a nice, non-racist fellow .01 percenter to sell the team to.

But even if the league eventually has this pustulant boil of a man forcibly removed, it’d be perfectly understandable if you were driven to pound nails into the floor with your forehead when you start thinking about the gargantuan pile of ducats that will be his ultimate “punishment.”

Sterling purchased the Clippers in 1981 for a mere $12 million, and Forbesrecently estimated the team’s total value at $575 million. But consider the recent purchase price of two relatively moribund franchises, the Sacramento Kings and the Milwaukee Bucks—$550 million and $536 million, respectively, far higher than anticipated. Neither are located in Los Angeles, nor do they boast transcendent stars such as Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. It’s not inconceivable that the price tag Sterling slaps on the Clippers might approach $1 billion.

And he still gets to treat the minorities who live in his housing projects far worse than he ever did the far more famous, basketball-playing people in his employ. Racism pays! Hooray!

If there are still any questions about why Sterling would own a basketball team—and pursue a relationship with a mixed-race woman—Indiana Pacers forward David West unpacked the historical underpinnings of the octogenarian’s behavior perfectly: “Sterling basically articulated Plantation Politics…Make money off the Bucks/Lay with the Women/No Association in Public good or bad.”